Multi-well plates and tube arrays are used extensively in a variety of laboratory and pharmaceutical applications, including, but not limited to: experimental assays, sorbent assays, high-throughput screening (HTS) assays, combinatorial chemistry, drug discovery, drug metabolism studies, liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS), cell culture, tissue culture, PCR analysis.
Multi-well plates and tube arrays are commercially available from any sources, typically in 4-, 6-, 12-, 24-, 48-, 96-, 384-, and 1536-well design. The foot print dimensions of these plates are maintained as constant measurements, with the only variation in design being in the number of the wells per plate. There are a variety of sealing films with adhesive backing that commercially available for sealing the surface of multi-well/multi-tube array for different applications. These sealing films can be heat-sealed or adhered to the surface of the plate by pressure application. These sealing films for sealing multi-well plates with adhesive backing are typically made from aluminum foil, polyester, polypropylene, etc, and are available in single-layer, multi-layer or roll form. However, the current film materials and methods for sealing multi-well plates with adhesive backed films have many significant drawbacks, including adhesive contact with content of the wells, contamination of needles with adhesive when penetrating through sealing films to access the contents of the wells, limited chemical resistance to many solvent-based solutions in the wells such as DMSO-containing solutions, leaching of plasticizer present in the sealing films by the well contents, and condensation into the well area during thermo-bonding of the sealing film to plate.
Alternatively, the wells may be sealed by placing flexible rubber mats with raised dimples on the surface of the mat in an array, which matches exactly the array of the wells. Each dimple is sized and shaped to fit firmly into the wells. However, this sealing method using dimples has limited usage due to the constraint of well size and geometry related to the plate design. Specifically design and manufacture of a mat with dimples matching the plate becomes extremely difficult when the mat requires more than 96 wells per plate.
Patterned adhesive application with a microwave popcorn package was described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,928,554 to Olson et al. The popcorn package in the '554 patent is generally made of plies of a flexible material, such as paper, bonded or adhered to one another, with microwave interactive construction between the plies. The laminating adhesive between the plies is applied in a preferred pattern by application of Gravure, or flexography. U.S. Pat. No. 3,847,725 to Hochner, U.S. Pat. No. 4,111,734 to Rosenfield, U.S. Pat. No. 5,587,214 to Mitchell and U.S. Pat. No. 4,654,251 to Kada, describe Dry Transfer material made of a carrier sheet, which may include a polymeric coating or a release chemical treatment, with inked indices printed thereon and continuous pressure sensitive adhesive overlying on the indicia. This assembly then can be transferred to other surfaces by self-adherent properties of the adhesives. Pattern printing of adhesives is also described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,344,260 B1 to Lythgoe. A decalcamania or dry transfer is disclosed in which a design indicium is supported on a flexible carrier sheet and a pressure sensitive adhesive is applied to the indicium and to the surrounding surface of the carrier sheet in a pattern of discrete dots using screen printing. By applying the adhesive as a pattern of dots, the adhesive shears cleanly around the perimeter of the indicium when the indicium is transferred from the carrier sheet to a receptor surface.
The present invention adopts Gravure, screen, Rotary Screen, flexography, and pad printing or die cutting of transfer adhesive film to desired format, followed by dry transfer to any desired materials. This invention provides sealing solutions for use with multi-well plate products, including multi-well plates surfaces, with adhesive free areas, which are not in contact with the well contents when sealing films adhere to plate.